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Our plan this morning was to go ride on the Wiener Riesenrad, the famous giant ferris wheel in the Prater amusement park; notably used as a set in the James Bond film The Living Daylights. After breakfast of muesli, we went out to catch a train from Karlsplatz to Praterstern. We arrived a bit after 10:00 and walked over to the Prater park, where many of the rides and attractions were open for operation. Prater is an interesting amusement park because all of the attractions are independently operated by different people, and they get to choose their own opening hours. It's not like a Disney or other amusement park where one company runs the whole park.
The Riesenrad is one of the closest attractions to the train station, so it didn't take long to get there. Because it was early, there were only a few people queued up for tickets and to ride the wheel. We only needed to wait a few minutes before being let into a carriage with about six other people. The carriages are very spacious, with room to walk about or sit down as you please. There are open windows on each long side for poking cameras out to take photos without glass in the way. We rode only one turn of the wheel, but it moves slowly and stops at each car to let people off and new passengers on, so it took a good 15 minutes or so to go around the once. We paused right at the top for a while and had plenty of time to see the panoramic view of Vienna and take photos.
Once the ride was over, we walked a short loop around some of the other attractions. There was a large ghost train building which was extravagantly decorated with all manner of spooky things, including two fountains of "blood", which had skeletons lying in the red water, giant skulls, and a guillotine that you could poke your head through and have a photo taken, the blade liberally splattered with painted blood. A creepy voice boomed over a PA speaker—in German, which it sound even scarier. We took some photos and walked on, past dodgem cars and other things, before deciding to leave.
M. wanted to visit an art supply shop, so I'd spent some time at breakfast searching for one, and decided that Gerstäcker was the best bet. We'd thought about coming back to the apartment for lunch and then going out to Gerstäcker in the afternoon, but it was barely past 11:00 so we decided to hop on a train and go straight there before lunch. We took a U3 train (our fourth train line) from Praterstern to Schottenring, and transferred to a U4 train to Pilgrimgasse. From there it was a short walk to Gerstäcker.
This art supply store was huge! It extended back from the street front about 40 or 50 metres, with numerous aisles of paints, brushes, paper, pencils, pens, canvas, crafting materials, picture frames, clay, glazes, and so on. There was even a bin full of blocks of marble! We browsed around like kids in a candy store, looking excitedly at all the cool things. M. got a couple of small sketchbooks, while I found some packs of Sakura brand brush pens, like the one we bought in Tokyo and I've been using for ink drawings on this trip, only there were packs of nine colours and a pack of six different greys. I bought both of them, and also a small Faber-Castell pencil sharpener that would fit into my travelling pencil case.
Once we were done exploring this Aladdin's Cave, we left and began walking back along Margaretenstrasse towards our accommodation. It was only one train stop past Kettenbrückengasse where we'd walked to before, so it wasn't a long walk and we decided to take the opportunity to explore more of the neighbourhood. But first we stopped at a coffee shop named Karl where we had drinks and shared a cinnamon pastry. M. asked if there were some toilets nearby that we could use, and the two ladies behind the counter said we could go across the street and into a courtyard where there were several restaurants, and they had toilets in there. So we explored over there and after winding our way through a twisting arcade that we never would have thought to enter by ourselves, we found ourselves in a small courtyard and there were indeed public toilets there, free to use. So that was good.
We walked along more blocks of Margaretenstrasse, noticing that this neighbourhood had a lot of artsy shops, with various design things for furniture, home furnishings, fashion, and also art such as galleries and studios, as well as bookstores and similar sorts of things. So it was interesting and well worth the walk.
Eventually we reached Naschmarkt and stopped at a bakery stall to buy a bread roll for our lunch. We still had cheese and tomatoes at the apartment, so a simple lunch would do us there until our dinner booking in the evening. We made a sandwich each and relaxed in the coolness inside for a while. We did some sketching and M. filled in some of her watercolour painting.
About 17:10 we emerged to walk to our dinner reservation. I'd booked Tian Bistro am Spittelberg, a place that does vegetarian fine dining, and only a 10-15 minute walk from our apartment. I had to book early as later reservation times were unavailable, until 20:30, which was too late for us to eat dinner. We arrived and were shown to a table outside in the laneway, which was pleasant and breezy, better than in the non-air-conditioned interior. We ordered some "sparkling shrub" to drink, which was explained to us as fermented passionfruit and honey, and was delicious.
The dinner was a fixed menu served over four courses. The starter consisted of individual serves of portobello mushroom with marinated tomato, and sharing plates of: green and yellow beans on a white bean puree with hazelnuts; buckwheat waffle bites with rhubarb and some sort of leafy greens; a beetroot tartare; and bread to go with it all, with salted butter and extra virgin olive oil. Next came two more sharing plates: zucchini chunks, baby zucchini, zucchini strips, and zucchini flowers with almonds, olive oil, and dill; and paper thin sliced kohlrabi with elderflowers, peas, pea puree, and pea leaves. The main course was a chanterelle risotto with pickled onions, accompanied by a fennel and caraway salad. And then the desert was two more sharing plates: cheesecake curd on a white chocolate shell with rhubarb sorbet, stewed rhubarb, and rhubarb foam, and thin charcoal stick biscuits; and chocolate mousse with strawberry granita, strawberry sorbet, strawberry meringue, strawberry foam, and macerated strawberries. All of the dishes were amazingly good and the service was attentive and friendly. Really a very nice experience for our last night in Vienna.
After we finished, we walked back to our room to retire before leaving for Salzburg tomorrow. While relaxing before bedtime I drew some more sketches of our trip, and I tried out the new grey brush pens that I'd bought in Gerstäcker. I drew the Ankeruhr historical clock and took a photo of the drawing before adding the greys, because I wanted a record of it in case I ruined it, since this would be my first time experimenting with the grey pens. Then I added the greys. I was slightly disappointed that the grey pen tips seemed to be brush shaped felt tips, not actual brushes like the black one I've been using. But still they seemed to work okay.
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